


Deep, Deep Down

by Dutch



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fossils, Homestuck Polyswap 2018, Multi, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, True Love, excavation site shananigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 23:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15278787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dutch/pseuds/Dutch
Summary: Jade, Dave, and Karkat find something extra special on a dig site, causing Dave to realize he's found something special above ground.





	Deep, Deep Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheMissluluB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMissluluB/gifts).



> Enjoy friend!!! Happy polyswap! and happy summer!

Earth C was the same dirt as the earth prime. It still made mud when it got wet, it still crumbled between fingers, it was still made of clay and sand and stone and soil. Where kids played ball and every day people walked, cities paved and little country towns bumped over on the way to church. Ten inches of topsoil here to grow food and families and friendship.

Dave wasn’t entirely sure how long the earth had been without people. The planet had been through a lot, bombarded with meteors, destroyed, rebuilt, fast forwarded five thousand years. A lot of things from the alpha earth prior had surfaced, the one where his post-scratch self had lived, beginning with the Statue of Liberty, and from there it never ended. Floppy disc and old, ruined computer monitors, lamps, spoons, a bong and even a collection of old CDs, of which very few worked. They could have filled museums devoted to this stuff, and of course, they sprung up wherever the dig sites were. Fax machines upon Walkmans upon cat dishes and shelf after shelf of things that weren’t that old to Dave, but were considered ancient.

But, Dave guessed, it wasn’t about what they found. It was about the people he spent the time with.

The summer sun beat down just as hot as it had back in Texas. The area around them reminded him of Texas a bit too, the west side, where it was mostly dry instead of the greener land in east Texas. It was just as parched here, just like it had been there, dotted with a few trees here and there, some shrubs and tall grasses, beyond the expanses of rich brown dirt. But it was a cool place to explore, no matter how homesick it made him looking at, always something new to find or trail to blaze.

“Hey, Dave, can you hear me?”

Dave’s attention jerked sideways, finding his boyfriend standing to his left, holding a pen and journal in his dusty hands, meant to record their findings.

“What?” He asked, genuinely having not heard a word.

“I said what are you doing starring off into space like that?” Karkat repeated.

“Just thinking is all,” Dave assured him.

“This place reminds me of Texas,” he added, because four words didn’t make a conversation, they would only make him worry.

“Oh, I see,” Karkat nodded. “We used to have places like this on Alternia too. Vriska and Equius used to live in a place similar. I never went there though.”

“Hey, if you two are gonna stand around and talk, I’m going to quit!” Shouted a third voice. Jade, how could he space out and forget Jade?

“Hey, yeah, come take a breather, girl,” Dave encouraged. He stepped the five feet over to the excavation hole and held out a hand to help her out of it.

Jade’s hand was sweaty, he noticed first thing. Sweaty like the rest of her, even under that big sun hat on her dust-caked, freckled face. Her white ears even seemed to droop with the heat, casting tiny triangle shadows on her tanned shoulders. They needed to reapply sunscreen, Dave thought idly.

Karkat, who they had only recently persuaded to wear lighter colors with less fabric leaned over to a nearby cooler, his peach colored tank top riding up in the back, and grabbed a few bottles of water, passing it out silently. It was nice to be able to just stand and be quiet for just a moment. And then Dave was pulling an extra hair tie he had brought specially for her off of his wrist and took to combing her hair back with his fingers. In the last few years, he’d gotten good at it too, making sure not to get any of those loopy things she didn’t like, or pull on her absolute mane of hair. It took some effort, smoothing down the top, keeping her fringe out of it, mushing the frizz into a ball off a bun to sweep it off of her neck. Sometimes he wondered if she forgot her hair tie just so he could do this for her.

“How’s that?” He asked once she surfaced from her drink.

“Better,” she smiled.

“So, have we found anything we don’t already have twelve hundred of already?” Karkat asked, frowning as he cracked the cap on his water after holding on a bit too tight, getting his shirt wet. “Goddamn it.”

“Nah, I think this holes just about dryer than the mail man’s elbows in December, gotta get some Gold Bond for this shit, extra strength with a pump handle.”

“I don’t think I’ve found anything either,” Jade replied. “The only thing I’ve pulled out of this hole that’s worthwhile is this.”

She reached behind her, in the back of her cut off overalls and pulled out what Dave was pretty sure was just a rock.

“A rock?” Karkat questioned. “Like we don’t have five billion other rocks lying around us in three hundred and fifty degrees of bullshit excavation site. Fucking chuck it. I bet I can throw it further than you.”

“No!” Jade frowned. “I’m keeping this one. It’s cool.”

“Let me see it, Jade,” Dave held out his hand for it.

“No, you’re gonna throw it!” She said, holding it tighter to her.

“I won’t, I promise,” Dave replied, and he really did mean it. She eyed him, deciding if he was playing a joke on her, but after a brief moment, she remembered her space powers. She could retrieve it even if he threw it.

She pressed it into his palm and he brought it closer to his face for a better look at the triangle piece, ready with all his geology facts to prattle off a joke about, but when he saw made him push his shades up on the top of his head. The rock was a triangle shape, sure, but it was what was in the rock that was interesting.

It was a tooth of some sort, fossilized hard and yellowed with time. Dave turned it over in his hand, ran his fingers across the smooth surface.

“What’s the deal with that?” Karkat asked, leaning over his left shoulder.

“It’s a fossil. I didn’t think we’d dug deep enough for these,” Dave replied, and it was with a smile. Not like the smiles he’d given on earth prime. With was a brand new, fresh off the presses, patented, trademarked, Strider smile that came with godhood and a stable relationship to boost his dopamine levels.

“What kind?” Jade chimed in, leaning over his right.

“I’m not sure, I’ve got a book back home though. We could check it out,” Dave offered.

An electric green zap was all it took to take them from the dirt field to the cylinder-shaped home they shared in New Can Town. It was always a little jarring when Jade moved them without asking, but it was a hell of a lot faster than flying, even with Dave’s own control over time to fast forward things.

He only took a second to get his barring in the house. In front of him was the entertainment center, behind him was a large, overly plush black couch, so that mean to their right was the bookcases. Following the curve of the wall under the staircase was a set of three bookcases, organized haphazardly by the number of times used. Right in the center, where Jade’s dry textbooks on chemistry and Botany, mixed in with Karkat’s favorite trashy romance nicely in English and Alteranian. Dave wasn’t a huge reader, despite having a ton of book on this thing as well, so he had to float to the top shelf to grab a tattered copy of a book on prehistoric earth that still had ‘Property Of The Public Library Of Houston’ stamped on the front cover. It was a fairly thick book, not nearly as big as some of the others it shared a shelf with, but it was going to take more than a minute to find what he was looking for.

“If y’all wanna get snacks and a blanket, we’ve got time for it I think,” Dave said, flipping open the cover and the filter front pages to the book's index. Was it under land or sea creatures? Dave thought maybe he was gonna need a map.

“I was thinking more like a shower,” Jade replied, showing him her dirty hands. Dave was rubbing red earth all over the books bleach white pages, he realized.

“Washcloth and a change of clothes, at least. We’re fucking scummy,” Karkat suggested instead, and that seemed to be the resounding answer. Dave left the book on the table in the kitchen on his way to the sink. His lovers had gone upstairs, planning to get more comfortable, but Dave settled for paper towel and a drink of ice water. He was far too excited to take time away from his task. With his hands clean now, he grasped the book and began turning pages, tons at a time until the page numbers got close, and then he leafed through them until it matched. There was an entire section on teeth in this book, maybe not as extensive as he liked, but Dave thought it was well enough to use. They were the ones writing the new books after all, without the old books and Dave’s prior knowledge they’d be pretty clueless.

Jade returned first, foraging behind him in the pantry for a package of fruit snacks before pulling up a chair.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this book before, are you sure you’ve had it since we moved in?” Jade asked, looking at the page over Dave’s shoulder.

“Yeah, I got it from Dirk one Christmas. He found it in his old apartment. Apparently, my alpha self liked fossils too,” Dave nodded. “This is one dime for an overdue book the library ain’t ever getting out of me.”

“Hilarious, because it was obliterated by flooding,” Karkat snarked, entering the room sans shirt but with clean pants. Jade said something in response but Dave wasn’t listening. He was turning though further pages until the picture on the page looked like what was sitting on the table top.

“Says it’s a shark tooth,” Dave said aloud, cutting off their conversation.

“In the desert?” Karkat asked, his eyebrows furrowing as he stepped clothed to look into the book as well.

“That place wasn’t always a desert,” Jade answered. “At some point in a long history, it was an ocean. Who knows when though.”

Karkat seemed to consider that.

“Says shark teeth are always replacing themselves, so they’re a pretty common find as far as fossils,” Dave continued. “Shit, that’s so cool. That’s cooler than fucking. I dunno. Do you remember that fucking Snoopy snow cone sword I had? That was cool. Cooler than that.”

“Didn’t you always want to be a paleontologist, Dave?” Jade asked, reaching for the book to read for herself.

“Yeah. I did,” Dave agreed, letting her have it. “Living the dream I guess. Got two sweet honeys and the career I always wanted. Fuckin’ ball.”

Dave could feel Karkat’s hip on his shoulder, nudging him before he spoke. “I prefer the earth slang ‘bae’ over ‘honey’, I’ll have you know.”

“If Karkat gets to pick then I get to pick too!” Jade whined, but it was just for show. “From now on I want to be called sweetie sugar honey pumpkin bunch.”

“Whoa, okay Harley. Tooth rotting fluff much?” Dave laughed, “I’m gonna call you that for good now. Might as well get a new driver’s license, no change backs. Right ‘bae?’”

Dave looked up at Karkat who somehow had managed to keep a completely straight face until then, covering his mouth to stifle giggles.

“No. Oh my god. Karkat, Dave needs a name!” Jade gushed.

“Insufferable prick,” Karkat offered, and despite that being the oldest trick in the book, Jade still laughed.

“I want to be addressed as The Artist Formerly Known As Dave Strider. That and that only. You have to say the whole thing every time you so much as speak to me. Oh, no, wait, wait, wait. That’s not stupid enough. Call me Pookie or something else fucking ridiculous that makes people uncomfortable in public.”

Karkat was more than giggling now, throwing his head back and losing himself in laughter. God, he looked so good like that. His eyes crinkling on the edges, the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. It was such a sharp contrast to the sleep-deprived, confused boy he’d first meet on the meteor. He had so much genuine emotion he had no idea what to do with back then, and sometimes he still had trouble, but it was nice to see that raw self come through.

“Whatever you say,” Jade said, a few last giggles on their way out. “What should we do with our find of the day?”

Karkat picked up the tooth, turning it over in his hands. Dave was sure Karkat was glad he hadn’t chucked the thing now. “I say we stick it somewhere safe and get lunch.”

“I could go for lunch,” Dave agreed.

“Sandwiches?” Jade suggested, and with no better suggestions, the three of them made their way back to the kitchen.

Meals were always sort of an assembly line. Things went faster if they all worked together, and after so long in the same routine, they worked like a well-oiled machine. Gone were the days of stepping over each other, dodging flying elbows and shouting matches over burnt food. For this particular lunch, Karkat was on bread and condiments, Dave on insides, and Jade on the completion, cutting it in half, sticking it on a plate and adding a handful of chips to the side.

Together, they retired to the living room couch instead of the table, Jade snatching up the remote to turn on something educational before Karkat made a mad grab for it to change the channel to a movie, spilling chips all over Dave’s lap. They settled finally on historical fiction, and even though Dave hated Downton Abbey, it made his lovers happy. If they were happy, so was he.

Jade sat to his right, her legs curled up next to her, her white ears in a relaxed position. She was a cuddlier, latching on to him like some kind of koala and hanging on like a vice. It didn’t matter how much Dave shifted, she was always comfortable, laying on him like her favorite pillow. She was, of course, the first to fall asleep with her head on Dave’s shoulder, the fluff of her ears tickling Dave’s neck.

To his left, Karkat started off far away. He was perched on the edge, leaning on the arm of the sofa. Over the course of the episode he worked his way closer, eventually, their hips touched, and then his hand closed on Dave’s own, and then his weight. It all ended with his head mirroring Jade’s on the opposite shoulder.

Even if both his arms were falling asleep, with the warm summer sun shining in through their front window, it was the perfect time for an afternoon nap. Dave let his eyes drift shut, sighing contently. He loved these two more than anything, and things felt right sandwiched between them.


End file.
